Overview

The European Project “Textile Heritage Inspiring Creatives – Createx” arises from the awareness that the exploitation of the textile heritage and know-how from industrial districts represents a most important factor of competitiveness and growth of the sector. The project idea was born for a series of initiatives to enhance the textile archives, carried out in recent years by the Prato Textile Museum Foundation with the support of various European programs. The proposal was born within the “European Textile Collectivities Association” Acte (www.acte.net), of which the Municipality of Prato has been a member for many years and which fostered the collaboration among textile cities, museums and enterprises to enhance their heritage and facilitate the transition of territorial systems towards the knowledge economy. All the project partners, in fact, come from cities with textile vocation belonging to the association (Gironella in Spain, Boras in Sweden, Lodz in Poland and Santo Tirso in Portugal, as well as Prato in Italy), who have decided to commit the development of their collaboration also in the cultural field.

The approach proposed by the project is mainly based on the existing experiences developed by the partners. It is focused on activities aiming to provide the tools allowing textile museums to digitalize the textile heritage as well as the methodologies to raise awareness among young designers and artists on the value that heritage represents for contemporary creation.

The project involves the development of two types of related activities:

1. Digitalising the textile heritage conserved in the partner territories, all of which share a well-established pre-industrial and industrial textile tradition, as well as being equipped with museum structures dedicated to the conservation and promotion of a heritage that expresses the local production. To achieve this activity, Prato Textile Museum’s significant experience in digitalising corporate textile archives will be put to good use and spread in Europe also through Heritage Manager, the cataloguing software developed within the activities of the ongoing Creativewear European project (MED Programme with the Municipality of Prato as lead partner and Prato Textile Museum as a partner).
2.  Experimenting with the use of digitised textile heritage as a source of inspiration for applied creativity and creative residencies. This activity involves the establishment of different opportunities to experiment with the creative reinterpretation of Europe’s textile heritage in the partner territories, involving fashion schools, as well as companies and young creatives and designers.

Timing

Createx Project started in September 2018 and its activities will be developed for 18 months, until February 2020.

Budget

The total grant awarded is € 198,000 (up to a maximum of € 200,000 referred to in the tender specifications), with co-financing from the participants equal to € 132,000, for a total project budget of € 330,000. The Foundation, in the role of lead partner, will receive € 63,000 in financing.